Creating Visual Movement and Rhythm

 

Creating movement with cut paper requires more than just cutting.  Your mind has to visualize and follow your idea of the line or shape before any cutting actually takes place.   Next, trying various arrangements and selecting the one that makes the piece "work" ...then you glue. At this point, what the artist sees flows backwards as Eric Jensen says, using our cognition and memory to double-check, mediate, and fill in what we see. Doing art, is a way of thinking and demonstrating the product of thinking.  What a marvelous journey, that's what I say-



Concepts:
contrast
movement
rhythm
positive and negative space
non-objective art


all artwork above by 4th grade

Slab Construction Ceramics

The middle school elective class learned how to make a slab construction ceramic piece.  In addition to the slab construction, their challenge was to infuse their piece with movement and/or personality.


 

 

Altering the Surface with Gesso

2nd grade had a lot of fun exploring texture while manipulating gesso for this project.  To create designs in the body of the animal, we moved the gesso around with paint scrapers or plastic utensils   The second day, we used watercolor crayons to paint in.  The transparency of the watercolors allows the texture of the gesso to show through beautifully.

 

The students could choose from an array of 3 dimensional animal models or could draw from memory.

Animals

These fabulous animal drawings and paintings are by K-1 kids.  Using 3 dimensional models we practiced 2 strategies for drawing animals.   The first one is the shape technique which focuses on observing the main shapes of the animal, for example the body looks like an oval, the head triangular etc.  The 2nd strategy we practiced was the outline technique.  Here, we find a starting point (the head) and use our pencil to follow the line of what we see onto paper. Giving them options on how to draw an animal helps increased their confidence as an artist as they find a way that works for them.  You can see both of these techniques in the bottom image.

 

We used one class period as a practice day, they chose various animals to try the 2 techniques with.   The second class period I returned their drawings, they chose their favorite and re-drew it larger on a new paper along with a habitat.  Super cool!

This Week in Art... from Gabriela Elizalde on Vimeo.

Free Form Collage

free form- encouraged to function or evolve without advance planning; spontaneous

Henri Matisse is a wonderful artist to study with kids, we can always relate to his joyful shapes and colors.  We talked about free form shapes, how they are kind of like recess.  When you are outside running free you're running in all directions, here and there, back and forth- not really knowing where you will go next.   They could really relate to that visual!  I demonstrated cutting out a free form shape by turning the paper not the hand that's holding the scissors, just making up the turns as I go along.  Giving the kids plenty of time to really get into the cutting and enjoy the process is a must do.   They begin to explore the possibilities as well as noticing  how the colors are working together once they begin to overlap.

Concepts discussed:
overlapping
contrast
movement
free-form shapes
composition

Sebastion, Kindergarten

All artwork by Kindergarten students

This Week in Art... from Gabriela Elizalde on Vimeo.